Crazy to Love You: A Forbidden Rockstar Standalone Romance (Wild Love Book 4) Read online

  Crazy To Love You

  J. Saman

  Copyright © 2020 by J. Saman

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Design: Shanoff Designs

  Photography: Wander Aguiar

  Model: Zakk

  Copy Editing: My Brother’s Editor

  Proofing: Danielle Leigh Reads

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue 1

  Epilogue 2

  Love to Tempt You

  Also by J. Saman

  Just One Kiss

  End of Book Note

  The Edge of Temptation

  If you’ve read the Wild Minds duet - Love to Hate Her and Hate to Love Him - then you do NOT need to read chapter 1. It is the same as epilogue 2 from the duet. Please make sure you read the prologue though!

  * * *

  Love is a journey with highs and lows and just when we think it is lost to us forever, it shows us it’s luminous colors and we’re born again.

  Prologue

  Naomi

  * * *

  “You told me you quit.” The words fly out of my mouth before I can even fully comprehend what I’m seeing. Florian’s deep brown eyes lined with a twinge of annoyance glide slowly up to mine. The partially filled syringe is still poised at the ready in his right hand, his left foot propped up on his opposite knee, his bare toes patiently waiting.

  He doesn’t respond. He doesn’t move. He just sits there, on the edge of the king-size hotel room bed, staring at me as if I’m the ultimate buzzkill, which in this case, I suppose I am. His aggravated expression makes me want to strangle him. He doesn’t even look upset that I just caught him about to shoot up when he promised me he was done with that shit. No, the son of a bitch looks like he wants to shove me out the door and get back to business.

  “Flor?”

  He lets out a weighty sigh, his head dropping before his shoulders raise in a shrug. “Nai, this doesn’t have to be a thing, okay?”

  “No. It’s not okay.” I walk over to him, lowering myself to my knees and placing my hands on his legs while doing my best to ignore the drugs in his hand. “You need help, baby.”

  His eyes narrow, instantly hardening, and for a half second, it scares me. He scares me. Because at this moment, this is not the man I’ve been in love with for the last four years. Not the man I thought I knew better than anyone. Better than I know myself even.

  No, this man is a stranger to me. A full-blown junkie who cares more about the high than anything else.

  I know this look intimately.

  It’s broken my heart more times than I can count.

  “Don’t start that shit with me again,” he snaps, practically shoving me off him. “I don’t have a problem. You know I don’t. I’m not an addict,” he sneers the word. “I only use it when I need to mellow out for a bit. You don’t know what it’s like for me right now. The stress I’m under.”

  Now it’s my turn to narrow my eyes. I fall back onto my haunches, folding my arms over my chest. “Oh, I don’t?” He blusters out a loud growl at my accusation. “Because all of this” —I wave my hand around our hotel suite— “isn’t my life too?”

  He lets out a sardonic laugh, rolling his head around on his neck like I’m stressing him out. Like I’m the last thing he needs or wants to deal with. Like I’m being overly dramatic about the fact that he’s about to shoot poison into his veins, seeking a high that will never be enough.

  Well, fuck him.

  “You handle this shit better than I do and you know it,” he says in that barking tone of his. The one he famously used when I was too weak and too fragile and needed the strong force of him to guide me through. “You don’t have a band you have to answer to. I’m the lead singer. I’m the frontman. I’m it. The image of the band and sometimes it’s too much. Sometimes I just need to escape, too mellow out for a bit without the world and the people who surround me, hounding me asking for something. Can’t you understand that? It doesn’t have to be the big deal you’re making it out to be.”

  “The people who surround you? Meaning me, right?”

  He growls. “So much drama. Still so much a teenager.”

  I ignore the dig as my eyes burn into his. “Flor, I can’t sit around and turn a blind eye to you shooting heroin into your body. It will kill you. Do you not see that?”

  He rolls his eyes dismissively at me. “I’m not your dad.” My breaths lodges in my chest, my hand flying up to rub that burn away. It’s useless. That pain is there for life. “He couldn’t control it. I can.”

  “Do you really believe that?” I’m incredulous. He can’t actually be that naïve.

  “Nai, Claw By Night is number fucking one. Our album is number one. Our song, yours and mine” —he waves his finger back and forth between us— “is number one. And goddamn Robert Snow is already hounding me about the next album. It doesn’t end, babe. There is no pause to this, and right now, I need there to be one.” He’s begging, and part of me bleeds for him. I get it. This is my life too. It is exhausting. Mentally and physically draining. Emotionally taxing. All of it is and yeah, it takes its toll.

  The constant hounding. The road. The travel and lack of your own personal space. The negative reviews and trolls. The haters. Even the lovers and obsessed fans.

  But…

  “Heroin isn’t the answer. It doesn’t solve or fix anything. We’ll take a break.” I reach up, cupping his stubble jaw. I love his face. I need his face. I need him. “We’ll go on vacation. Somewhere exotic and private. Just you and me. Screw the wedding, we can do a pre-honeymoon, honeymoon.”

  He smiles at me, his eyes softening. It’s the same smile he gave me before he got down on one knee and proposed. It was just the two of us, a beach and the sunset. It was perfect. We’re perfect. Florian loves me. I love him. That’s all we need—just us.

  God, doesn’t he know how much I need him?

  He’ll stop for me. He promised me he would.

  Please, I need him to stop.

  I can’t watch someone else I love die. Especially not from that stuff. I just… I just can’t.

  “That sounds amazing. It does. But you know it’s not a reality. I have another album to get going on and the Grammys in two months. Maybe after that. I don’t know.”

  “That’s precisely why you don’t need this stuff. Why you should stop.”

  “No, it’s why I do need it.”

  “Florian, please let me check you into rehab.”

  “Rehab!” he belts out. “Are you insane? Did you not just hear all the shit I have to do. I don’t have time for rehab. I barely have time for myself. For you.”

  I shake my head. “You need to stop,” I plead, reaching a breaking point with the back and forth.

  “And what if I don’t?” he challenges, his head tilting. “You gonna leave me? You gonna stop loving me?”

  I shake my head at him, so lost and scared, I can hardly think straight through the panic as it ripples across my skin. Tears well up in my eyes, and I press my hand into his face a little more. Needing him to see what this is doing to me. To us.

  He barely acknowledges it.

  He reaches out, brushing a stray tear away, and part of me breaks. Shatters before him. He’s been my constant for the last four years. Through everything. And I’ve been his. I’ve given him everything I have, living a life that hasn’t been mine just so I can be with him.

  “I love you. God, Flor, I love you so much. That’s why I need you to stop. That’s why I can’t let you do this to yourself.”

  “Christ, you’re being unreasonable.” He pushes me away, harder this time, and I know I’ve lost him. Florian Heart has never pushed me away. Ever. He’s always pulled me toward him.

  He stands up, tossing the needle on the bed and pacing an angry path toward the window that overlooks Paris and then back again. He sits on the bed and levels me with a look I’ve never seen on him before.

  “I don’t want to hear any more about this. I’m not your father. I’m not an addict. I can stop, I just don’t want to. I want to do this. End of fucking story, N
aomi. I mean it.”

  Tears stream down my face, pouring helplessly from my eyes. My throat swells and my chest clenches so tight I can hardly breathe. I’ve only ever felt this helpless once before, and no matter what I did or said or tried, I lost. That’s how it is with this. I know it better than most. If he doesn’t want to stop, he won’t. Nothing I say or do will change that. That change has to come from within, and he’s not there. Nowhere close.

  Panic consumes me as I absorb the enormity of that.

  “I can’t turn a blind eye to it. I can’t pretend like it’s not everything. Because it is. Please,” I beg, my voice beyond desperate.

  “I love you,” he whispers softly as he dips his head, his lips brushing against mine. Our foreheads meet as he stares deeply into my eyes. “I love you so fucking much. Since the first moment I saw you all those years ago, I knew you were it for me. You were so young and beautiful. These last four years have been the best of my life. I want to marry you, Naomi. I want us to be together, make music together, forever.” I swallow past the lump in my throat, hopeful that his love for me is enough only to have that thought ripped from me with his next words. “But I need you to accept me. Accept who I am and what I do. Including this.” He reaches out and taps the needle laying pathetically on the bed.

  My eyes slam shut as my breath stutters in my chest. My heart beats wildly, consumed and sick with this burgeoning fear.

  “And if I can’t accept this?” I squeak out, my voice cracking.

  “Then we’re done, baby.”

  I sob out, unable to understand how we got here. We’re supposed to get married in four months. Four. I have a dress. I booked the venue, which has remained a secret to not only the world but to our guests as well. All they know is a date and a general location. We’ve been so happy. So full.

  It’s been a fairy tale. My dream come true.

  And now I’m stuck in a nightmare, and I don’t know how to wake up.

  I don’t know how to walk away from him, but I have to.

  I have to.

  Because I cannot accept his drug use. I cannot accept that he won’t get help for it. I can’t. I lost my father to that. Drugs took everything I’ve ever had away from me. Music has taken everything I’ve ever loved away from me. I can’t watch Florian die, helpless to stop it, the way I did with my father.

  He used to say the same things to me that Florian is saying to me now.

  I just need a break. I just need to escape. It’s not a problem.

  But it was and it is.

  “Is it really that easy for you? If I don’t accept that you’re injecting fucking heroin, then we’re done?” I sob, reaching up and holding his head against mine.

  “No. It’s not. It fucking hurts. You’re my world, but so is my music. So is this craziness. If you loved me the way you say you do, you’d understand this piece of me. Every piece of me. I need it.”

  Christ. No words have gutted me more. “And if you loved me the way you say you do, you’d stop. If you cared about us, our future, your future, your music, you’d stop.”

  “Goddammit,” he yells, jerking away from me. “Screw this. Go. Just go. I can’t do this with you anymore.”

  The finality in his voice tells me he knows that we’re already done. He’s known this was my hard limit all along, and part of me wonders if ending it was what he was after all along. It didn’t exactly take him much to get here. Heroin over me. That’s what just happened.

  I reach out, grab his face, and press my lips to his. I kiss him with everything I have. Every ounce of love I’ve ever felt for him, I force into his body. “I love you,” I whisper against his lips.

  Then I stand up, look him in the eyes one last time before I turn around and walk out the door. He lets me go. Makes no effort to stop me. In fact, I bet he was grabbing for that needle before the door even closed behind me.

  I leave the hotel without speaking to anyone. I just get into a waiting cab and go to the airport.

  Home.

  I need to go home.

  But I don’t even know where that is anymore. Florian was my home.

  But now that life is over.

  Chapter One

  Gus

  2 years later

  * * *

  I should have expected this.

  And maybe part of me did. There was an element of dread locked low in my gut. But not to this extent. I didn’t anticipate standing up there, beside my brother, feeling like my heart was being ripped out of my chest.

  I let him have her. I gave him the girl who has owned my heart since we were kids. My first girlfriend. My first everything.

  The only one who has ever given me life and love and hope. Who broke through a darkness most know nothing of and few suspect.

  It’s rough. Feeling like you’re split in two and the only one who has ever made you feel whole is no longer yours.

  Viola looks beautiful.

  Exactly the way I used to picture her looking on this day. Only, instead of me being the groom, the man by her side, kissing her lips and saying ‘I do,’ it’s my brother.

  Jasper, being the intuitive bastard that he is was onto me from the first moment.

  He offered to have Henry or Keith take over for me. To make the speech. To walk her down the aisle, since there was no one else who could do it, and then stand beside him as best man.

  But there was no one else I wanted to have do it. Any of it. It’s why I volunteered in the first place.

  So, I told him no.

  He’s my brother, and they love each other, and she’s carrying his baby, and it’s all as it should be. It’s. All. As. It. Should. Be.

  I know this. But still…

  The heartbreak was on his face. The worry for me on a day when he shouldn’t have any. The man deserves some peace and happiness, and I’m sucking it from him because I’m nothing if not a selfish prick.

  A man who should not be picturing himself with the bride but is and has been all day.

  Slender arms wrap around my waist, a warm, soft body hugging me from behind draws me momentarily out of my dark thoughts. My eyes close, and I blow out a slow, even breath.

  “You’ve been quiet all day,” Vi says, face pressing into my back the way it used to when we were teenagers. I set down my drink on the nearest table and take hers, the ones pressed into the center of my chest, in mine, intertwining our fingers.

  “I know.”

  “You want to tell me about it?”

  “Nothing left to say that hasn’t already been said.”

  She makes a humming noise, and I’m just fucking up this wedding all around.

  “I’m so happy for you…”

  My words trail off only for her to pick up where I left off with, “But this hurts.” I swallow hard and silently nod. I wish it didn’t. It honestly shouldn’t at this point. I was the mastermind of Viola and Jasper becoming Viola and Jasper. I set it all into motion.

  I wanted this for them, dammit.

  I still do. I wouldn’t change the way it all turned out. The only thing I’d change is myself. Something I should have done so long ago. And maybe that’s it.

  The wonder: If she knows I only slept with those women to make the loneliness without her a little more tolerable?

  The lingering question: If I hadn’t cheated and broken her heart and trust, would it have been me today instead of my brother?

  I hear her sniffle, her body starting to tremble against mine, and Jesus, how many different ways can I fuck up one woman?

  “Aww, Vi. Shit. Don’t cry, babe. I didn’t mean to upset you, sweetheart.” I spin her around in my arms, and she shakes her head furiously, sucking in ragged breaths and forcing out a watery smile.